Car Tech Video: Ford Fusion Energi drives electric

Car Tech Video: Ford Fusion Energi drives electric

6:05 /
June 10, 2014

The 2014 Fusion Energi represents another step toward a fully electric car, adding 21 miles of electric range to a standard hybrid vehicle.

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The 2014 Fusion Energy, is Ford's plug-in hybrid.
That means, it gets electricity straight from the grid, to drive the wheel.
Let's take a look at this car, that's more hybrid than a hybrid.
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The Ford Fusion is a good looking and versatile Sedan.
Ford offers it, with four different engines, a hybrid version and this, the energy, the plugins hybrid energy version.
Now with the hybrid, you're recapturing kinetic energy, and storing it in the battery to drive the wheels.
You're not burning up your, brake pad, you're actually creating electricity.
Now with the plugin hybrid, you get all that, but you also can plug this car into the grid over night to charge up the battery.
Here we have this, port here.
This is a standard J1772 port.
You can charge up.
The 7.6 kilowatt hour battery in this car, takes about, two and a half hours on a 240 volt outlet, seven hours on a standard wall outlet.
Now, full charge, will get you 21 miles of pure electric range.
That's the EPA number.
It'll vary depending on your driving style.
That doesn't sound like much.
But, it beats the range, of the Toyota Prius plug-in and the Honda Accord plug-in.
Both come at about 13 miles.
Now, driving the front wheels is a 118 horsepower, electric motor.
We also have, a gasoline engine, a two liter, four cylinder gasoline engine, that produces 141 horsepower, 129 pound feet of torque.
So those two power sources when mixed together in this car's transmission, get a total system output, of 188 horsepower.
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Now that gives you, according to EPA, 100 miles per gallon equivalent.
That's if using the electric power source, or, when driving on the power as a hybrid, using the gasoline and electric motor, that gets you about 42 miles per gallon average.
Now in this 2014 Fusion energy, the MyPort touch interface comes standard.
We've seen this a lot in different Ford models, different Fusion models as well.
So, this is a set of four quadrant paradigm here, we phone in the upper left, we have navigation in the upper right, now that's an optional device we've got an SD card plugged in to an SD port in the console, that powers that, we have climate control on the lower right, and entertainment on the lower left.
Now we get a navigation, we get a map view, and notice this, this navigation system kind of throws up the map a little bit slowly and the traffic and it will automatically avoid traffic problems so.
That's a pretty good model under entertainment, we've got of course audio sources here we've got a lot of audio sources that stuck neatly along the left side here [UNKNOWN] we've got AM, FM, HD, Radio.
Satellite radio.
Still have a CD player in this car, that hasn't gone away yet.
We've got, a USB port in the console here.
I've got my iPhone plugged into it right now.
And, and we also have Bluetooth audio streaming, and you could also use that SD card slot, currently used for navigation, for music as well.
Now the phone, has the usual functions here.
I've got the dial pad here, I can go straight to my contacts list, and what's really good in the Ford cars in general and this Fusion Energy as well, is the voice command system.
With voice command.
I can place any calls via my contact.
Let's just go and say call dad, or something like that.
And it'll, pull up the number from my contact list.
i can, ask for music directly from anything plugged into the USB port, so I can say play Led Zeppelin for example.
Or, in navigation, I can enter an address as a single string.
That's all pretty good stuff.
Everything here, is mirrored on the right-hand screen, in the instrument cluster.
I control that, by the D-Pad here.
I can see my climate controls, here, and I can go and see what's playing, on music, or I can get onto navigation and view my turn-by-turn directions if I have a route programmed into the system.
And I have a neat little, because, is diffusion energy.
I got this little energy button here.
So this, gets me some managing screens here.
This se, settings screen actually lets me program in, a charge plan, so if I had this, plugged in over night I could say charge it at 2 AM in the morning or something, when electricity is cheaper.
Even cooler than this, though, is on the left side.
Instrument cluster.
I've got this pretty detailed screen which shows me a lot of information about how power is being used in the car.
I can also shift this around and see different things, like, a standard trip display, different fuel economy displays.
Lot of things going on here, they monitor, how the car is driving.
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It's driving, just like an electric car.
Pretty good pick up, accelerator feels good, quiet moving forward, and when I hit the brake, I can see, this little display showing me that I'm recharging the battery, and that's always a little bit gratifying cuz I'm, gaining miles.
With that big battery pack that weighs quite a bit.
That actually adds, 500 pounds compared to a standard gas engine in Ford Fusion.
And I feel that in the suspension when I'm going around corners, there's just a little more load, on the suspension.
Now, when I run out of my electric range, which I'm almost there, down to one mile, and the engine kicks in, what I'm really impressed about, is that power handout adding the, the gasoline engine to the power mix, is totally smooth.
I mean I haven't noticed, really any change in the power response.
From the accelerator, the power curve does not seem to change, much at all.
The ride still remains comfortable.
This car does a good job of, remaining, feeling like, a Ford Fusion.
Let's price out a 2014, Fusion Energy.
In a V-Trim, base price is just $35,525, with destination.
To do it up CNet style, add that navigation for $795, that's that SD card that plugs into the car, driver's assistance package goes for $1,140, that includes blind spot.
And lane departure, we got some cruises another $995, and rearview camera is the cheap $295.
That probably should have been, standard, but it will mandatory in 2016.
That puts us at a total, of $38,750.
Now plug-in hybrids, are kind of odd vehicles they depend a lot on your work and lifestyle.
So if you have a commute, of 20 miles or less, you won't spend a cent in gas, all week.
And then, on the weekends or a longer trip, you won't have range anxiety either with that gasoline engine.
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